If NVIDIA puts out a 7800XT with a bigger cooler, which makes the video card dual slots, instead of just one slot. This would allow them to increase the speeds of the RAM and GPU. And if they increase it to 512MB ram, they will knock ATI’s X1800XT off the map completely. Reply

Where are we now? We have at THG the same card beating teh 7800GTX hands down in several instances....and here at Anand, we have the ATI version barely holding its head above water.....talk about weird inconsistencies....someone is tweaking the numbers or the machines....one or the other.

Some of me would like to give the nod to THG because they have a history of doing more accurate more complete video card reviews, but this is just crazy....can someone at Anand please explain, cause well, I know THG won't. Reply

In terms of pricing, I think Nvidia has Ati beaten in every category of card currently.

I think the competition that ATI is marketing each card against is as follows(even if the prices have a huge disparity currently):
X1800XT vs 7800GTX
X1800XL vs 7800GT
X1600XT vs 6800/6600GT
X1600Pro vs 6600GT/6600
x1300Pro vs 6600
x1300 vs 6200

From what I've seen of the reviews from anandtech, techreport, and a couple other sources it looks like the X1800XT/XL are pretty competitive with their competition, however I really dislike the extra power consumption and of course the cost of the card. I think the 7800 is a far better solution in terms of most categories except a few minor features like having HDR/AA at the same time. It looks like it's possible the X1800 might have some gains in future games because of the better memory controller and threading pixel shader, but it seems rather useless for now.

The x1600 looks like the biggest disappointment by far. It's nowhere near the league of the 6800 cards and barely outperforms the 6600gt, which has a huge price advantage. The x800gto2 looks like a far better card than the x1600 here. Personally I'm hoping nvidia does what's expected and puts out a 90nm 7600 that has a decent performance gain over the 6600gt. That might be one of the best silent computing cards around when it comes out. (I'm hoping to replace my 6600 with this now that the x1600 is no upgrade for me)

The x1300 actually looks like the most promising chip to me. It's obviously not worthwhile for gamers, but I think it might turn out to be a pretty good drop-in card for non-gaming systems. It's all dependent on whether it can hit the price point for the under $100(or is that under $70) market well. It certainly looks like it'll outperform the 6200 and x300 and be the new standard for entry level systems... until nvidia's next entry card. Not to mention most of the x1x00 generation features are still included with the x1300 card. Reply

As for X1300 don't forget this is the best version out of X1300 family and I can't help but remember the FX 5200 Ultra, which looked great but was never really available, because they could not produce it at low enough price point. I think same will happen here. Reply

I was expecting ATI to make a comback here, but the performance is absolutely abysmal in most games. I dont know what else to say except this product is just gonna be sitting in shelves unless the price is cut severely. Reply

LOL! I wouldn't say abysmal. Abysmal would be the X1800XT performing like a 6600GT. The card that doesn't do well is the X1600. X1800's are fantastic performers and certainly much better than my 6600GT at displaying all of a games glory. It just wasn't the ass kicker most everyone hyped it up to be. But technically speaking, it IS an ass kicker. Reply

i am a bit disappointed - while at work i overflew the other reviews and then, as the crowning end of my day i read the AT review.

I (and probably many others) were waiting for this card like it's the best think since sliced bread - and now, WAY too late we do *indeed* have a good card - but a card which is a contender to NV's offerings and nothing groundbreaking.

Don't get me wrong - better AF/AA is something i always have a big eye on, but then ATI always had this slight edge when it came to AF/AA.

The pure performance in FPS itself is rather sobering - just what we're used to the last few years...usually we have TWO high-end cards out which are PRETT MUCH comparable - and no card is really the "sliced bread" thing which shadows all others.

This is kind of sad.

The price also plays a HUGE factor - and amongst the nice AA/AF features i have a hard time to legitimate say spending $500 for "this edge"...especially as someone who already owns a X850XT .

Not as long i am still playable in HL2/DOD/Lost Coats etc....i dont think i will see FPS fall *that quick* - in other words: I can "afford" to wait longer (R580 ?) and wait for appropriate Game engines (UT2K4 ??) which would make it necessary for me to ditch my X850XT because the X850 got "slow".

D3/OpenGL performance is still disappointing - but then i dont know what NV-specific code D3 uses - but still sad to see this card getting it in the face even if it now has SM3.0 and everything.

Availability:

Well..here we go again....

Bottomline: If i were rich and the card would be orderable RIGHT NOW i would get the XT - no question.
But since i am not rich and the card is *a bit* a disappointment and obviously NOT EVEN AVAILABLE - i will NOT get this card.

It's time to sit back, relax, enjoy my current hardware, watch the prices fall, watch the drivers get better...and then, maybe, one day get one of those or A R580 :)

I WISHED it would NOT have been a day making one "sit and relax" but instead burst out in joy and enthusiasm....but well, then this is real life :)
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They were likely better off trying to market that we didn't need new video cards this year and save their capital for next year. These performance charts, especially the "mid range" parts are awfully embarrassing to their company. Reply

There is no image quality difference, and I doubt you've used either card. Fact of the matter is that you'll never notice IQ differences in the vast majority of the games today. Hell, it's even hard to notice differences in slower paced games like Splinter Cell. The reality is that speed is and always will be the number one priority, because eye candy doesn't matter if you're bogged down by choppy frame rate.

Right now, there is zero reason to want to purchase these cards, if you can even find them. That's fact. Accept it and move on until something else is released. Reply

Quality includes also playing a game without shimmering. I can't get that on my 7800GTX.
Before anyone replies, the 78.03 drivers improve a lot the problem but does not fix it.

The explanation is inside Derek's article:

"Starting with Area Anisotropic (or high quality AF as it is called in the driver), ATI has finally brought viewing angle independent anisotropic filtering to their hardware. NVIDIA introduced this feature back in the GeForce FX days, but everyone was so caught up in the FX series' abysmal performance that not many paid attention to the fact that the FX series had better quality anisotropic filtering than anything from ATI. Yes, the performance impact was larger, but NVIDIA hardware was differentiating the Euclidean distance calculation sqrt(x^2 + y^2 + z^2) in its anisotropic filtering algorithm. Current methods (NVIDIA stopped doing the quality way) simply differentiate an approximated distance in the form of (ax + by + cz). Math buffs will realize that the differential for this approximated distance simply involves constants while the partials for Euclidean distance are less trivial. Calculating a square root is a complex task, even in hardware, which explains the lower performance of the "quality AF" equation.

Angle dependant anisotropic methods produce fine results in games with flat floors and walls, as these textures are aligned on axes that are correctly filtered. Games that allow a broader freedom of motion (such as flying/space games or top down view games like the sims) don't benefit any more from anisotropic filtering than trilinear filtering. Rotating a surface with angle dependant anisotropic filtering applied can cause noticeable and distracting flicker or texture aliasing. Thus, angle independent techniques (such as ATI's area aniso) are welcome additions to the playing field. As NVIDIA previously employed a high quality anisotropic algorithm, we hope that the introduction of this anisotropic algorithm from ATI will prompt NVIDIA to include such a feature in future hardware as well. "
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"With its 512MB of onboard RAM, the X1800 XT scales especially well at high resolutions, but we would be very interested in seeing what a 512MB version of the 7800 GTX would be capable of doing."

Based on the results in the benchmarks I would say 512MB barely does anything. Look at the benchmarks on Page 10 the Geforce 7800GTX either beats the X1800 XT or loses by less then 1 FPS. SCALES WELL AT HIGH RESOLUTIONS? Not really, has the author of this article looked at their own benchmarks included? When the resolution is at 2048 x 1536 the 7800GTX creams the competition except in Farcry where it loses by .2FPS to the X1800XT and Splinter Cell it loses by .8FPS so basically it's a tie in those 2 games.

You know why Nvidia does not have a 512MB version because look at the results...it does shit. 512Mb is pointless right now and if you argue you'll use it for the future then will till future games use it and then buy the best GPU then, not now. These new ATI's blow wookies, so much for competition. Reply

You decide if that's worth the 200US price difference to you, Adaptive AA, I wouldn't count as apparently through ATI's driver all R3xx hardware and higher now have this capability not just R5xx derivatives, sort of like the launched with R4xx feature Temporal AA. Reply

So even if these cards were available in stores/online today, the best PCI-E card one can buy for ~$250 is still either an X800XL or a 6800GT. (Or an X800 GTO2 for $230 and flash and overclock it.)

I find it disturbing that they even waste the time to develop, let alone release, low-end parts that price-wise can't even compete. Why bother wasting the development and processing to create a card that costs more and performs less? What a joke those two lower-end cards are (x1300 and x1600). Reply

The Radeon X1600 XT is intended to replace the older X700 Pro, not the stop gap 6600 GT competitors, X800 GT, X800 GTO, which only came into being because ATI had leftoever supplies of R423/R480 & for X800 GTO only R430 cores and of course due to the fact that X700 Pro wasn't really competitive in performance to 600 GT in the firstp lace, due to ATI's reliance on Low-k technology for their high clock frequencies.

X700 is 156mm2 on 110nm, X1600 is 132mm2 on 90nm
X550 & X1300 are roughly around the same die size, sub 100mm2.

Though the newer cards use more expensive memory types on their high end versions.

They also finally bring ATI's entire family as having the same feature set, something that hasn't been seen ever before by ATI I believe. I mean having a high end, mainstream & budget core based on the same technology.

Hence, the non-existence of 7600 and 7200 (or whatever) cards from NVIDIA. But ATI needed to get SM3.0 into budget and mid-range cards - not because it's tremendously useful, but because they're losing the marketing campaign on that item. Reply

quote:I am an NVIDIA user probably for LIFE but this review didn't seem to do ATI justice

Reviews aren't supposed to be favorable they're supposed to present facts so that WE the consumer can make informed purchase decisions. And right now, ATI doesn't present a good bang for the buck. Reply

Agreed. I'm not a stickler for perfect grammer, but the grammer & spelling quality of AT articles has gone down hill tremendously in the past year!

Seems you guys have just been throwing stuff together at the last minute to try and make a deadline. Anand - you need to step in here and get these guys back on track. It's hurting both your and your sites reputations. Reply

Yes, I have a feeling it'll be one of those cases where they make some editions and fixes to the article. Not that horrible, come on - I do agree the graphs are confusing. More important than graphs of benches, though, for me is the examination of the new AA, the architecture, features etc. Which they did a fair job of

One remark: the bulleted lists are missing the bullets ... e.g. on page 2 the list of new features. Reply

Yes, this is the worst article I have ever seen posted on Anandtech. Will Anandtech continue to be my first stop on my daily hardware fix? Yes. Will I ever make Toms Hardware my first stop again? No. JEEEEZ toms sucks now. If you want to complain about a site as a whole take a look at them. They actually posted articles about how to pick up chicks while gaming! Multiple articles! Good Lord. Reply

Everyone's always surpised by this. Why? They've done this countless times now as if it's acceptable. Seriously, don't post an article until it's done and have it proofread carefully before posting it. I honestly doubt your (Anandtech) editors are doing more than just skimming articles sometimes with the number of typos and gramatical errors I come across.

I hope the quality goes back up, because it will eventually hurt your reputation. Reply

Since the X1800 SKUs will not have the AGP bridge available (PCI-E) only, that leaves the X1600XT to attempt to give us AGP users a performance boost.

Sadly, the X1600XT performs barely on par with a GeForce 6600GT -- which can be had for $150. Then, looking at the performance of the X1600XT, and comparing it to the X850 XT-PE -- surprise surprise, the year-plus old X850 XT is considerably superior.

So if you're like me and built your box nearly 2 years ago, and have no choice but to buy an AGP part, it looks like the X850 XT-PE is going to be the highest performance part you can buy. Looks like I'll be grabbing one this weekend, so my performance in raids on Molten Core is drastically improved (runs a 6600GT at 1600x900 with minimum detail settings -- suffers from mid 20fps all the time while trying to tank). Reply

The review states: "With its 512MB of onboard RAM, the X1800 XT scales especially well at high resolutions,". From what I see it scales very poorly at high resolutions compared to the 7800GTX 256MB card. Just look at what happens in SC:CT and FarCry. The XT goes from having a substantial lead in 1600x1200 to being about equal with the 7800GTX at 2048x1536. Reply

Usually you are not CPU limited at such high resolutions. Though it would of course be possible. But my comment still stands; the XT is not showing any good scaling at higher resolutions in those benchmarks, rather the opposite. Reply

i am not surprised, with 16 Pixel pipelins everybody knowed ATi was going to loose, ATi has Always sucked and continues to do so. even in Cross-FIre radeon 1800XTs won't come near SLied 7800GTXs. hats off to NVIDIA and thumbs down to ATi. Reply

"The Radeon X1800 XT fares much better against the GeForce 7800 GTX. It is faster, on the whole, whether you apply AA and AF or not (though the difference is tiny without them). The only reason the 7800 GTX remains less than 20% behind is because of the dominance of Nvidia in Doom 3. Without that game, ATI pulls even further ahead."

"With 8 fewer pixel pipelines, it's impressive to see this difference in performance, even though the X1800 XT runs at a much higher clock speed. We question whether it can be attributed to all the improvements in the new architecture for the sake of per-pipeline efficiency, or if it has more to do with the 25% advantage in memory bandwidth."

The 16 pipes vs. 24 pipes is not enough to draw a conclusion. At this site, the ATI cards wins with 16 pipes in most cases. Reply

I don't understand how Anandtech can complain about no products at launch when they post live review articles when they aren't even remotely ready. I know you guys are doing it because you want to post the article when the other sites do but if it isn't ready, it isn't ready. Come on. You are doing the exact same thing as ATI's paper launches.

You have graphs showing the X1800xl beating x1800xt. You say there is good scaling with AA enabled but you don't show the data without AA. You also only tested like 5 games. Where is the 3dmark benches? Where are all the other games?

Oh and one other thing. The cards picked for each section: budget, midrange, highend seem randomly chosen. Why don't we have 9200, x300, 5200, 6200, x1300 in the low end? 9600, x600, 5600, 6600, x1600 in the mid range? And 9800, x800, 5900, 6800, x1800, 7800 in the high-end? If you can't go back two generations of cards, then show some of the derivatives of last generation at least (xl, xt, xt pe, pro, ultra, etc.). Everything is so scatter-brained here no one can tell what card is faster than what.

Go to extremetech.com. They show the ATI cards winning in almost every single test and they also have 3dmark scores. ATI did a great job with 16 pipelines and gives almost 1.5x performance over x800 series and beats the 7800. Don't use this site to determine the winner. Go to multiple sites. Reply

So you only look for benchmarks that show what you want to see? Besides, I checked extremetech.com and ATI did NOT win all of the benchmarks there. 2 fps is not a win as you will NEVER be albe to tell the difference. Besides, how the hell is 2 fps or even 10 fps worth $100?

I'll tell you how it is a win. Take a 8 less pipeline architecture, put it onto a brand new 0.90nm die shrink, clock the hell out of the thing, consume just a little more power and add all the new features like sm3.0 and you equal the competition's fastest card. This is a win. So when ATI releases 1,2,3 etc. more quad pipes, they will be even faster.

I don't see anything bob. Anandtech's review was a very bad one. ALL the other sites said this was is good architecture and is on par with and a little faster than nvidia. None of those conclusions can be drawn from the confusing graphs here.

Read the comments here and you will see others agree. Good job, ATI and Nvidia for bringing us competition and equal performing cards. Now bob, go to some other sites, get a good feel for which card suits your needs, and then go buy one. :) Reply

I read the other sites as well as AT. Quite frankly, I trust AT before any of the other sites because their methodology and consistancy is top notch. HardOCP didn't even test a X1800XT and if I was an avid reader of their site I'd be wondering where that review was. I guess I don't see it your way because I only look for bang for the buck not which could be better if it had this or had that. BTW, I just got some free money (no, I didn't steal it!) today so I'm going to pick up a 7800GT. :) Reply

One of the reasons for the card selections is due to the price of the cards -- and was stated as such. Just because ATI is calling the card "low-end" doesn't mean it should be compared with other low-end cards. If ATI prices their "low-end" card in the same range as a mid-range card, then it should rightfully be compared to those other cards which are at/near the price.

But your point is well taken. I'd like to see a few more cards tossed in there. Reply

Derek, I don't know if you have the time for this, but a review at other website showed a huge difference in performance at the Fear Demo. Ati was in the lead with substantial advantage for the maximum framerates, but near at minimum.

Well, the review does state that the FEAR Demo greatly favors ATI, but that the actual shipping game is expected to not show such bias. Derek purposefully omitted the FEAR Demo in order to use the shipping game instead. Reply

Is it safe to assume that you guys might not have had enough time with these cards to do your usuall in-depth review? I'm sure you'll update for us to be able to get the full picture. I also must say that I'm missing the oc part of the review. I wanted to see how true it is taht these chips can go sky hig.> Given the fact that they had 3 re-spins it may as well be true. Reply

The best reason to continue benchmarking games which have been out for a while is because those are the games which the older GPUs were previously benched. When review sites stop using the old benchmarks, they effectively lose the history for all of the older GPU's, and therefore we lose those GPUs in the comparison.

Granted, the review is welcome to re-benchmark the old GPUs using the new games ... but that would be a significant undertaking and frankly I don't see many (if any) review sites doing that.

But I will throw you this bone: While I think it's quite appropriate to use benchmarks for two years (maybe even three years), it would also be a good thing to very slowly introduce new games at a pace of one per year, and likewise drop one game per year. Reply

they have to retest whenever they use a different driver/CPU/motherboard, which is quite often. I bet they have to retest every other article or so. Its a pain in the butt, but thats why we visit and don't do the tests ourselves. Reply

I agree. But, some review sites are still touting Quake3 as a benchmark for some components (mainly CPUs now, but still)... they use games that stress the component well, not really the games you and I may be playing. Kind of ironic, I know.

Honestly, when was the last time any of us fired up Doom3, except to benchmark something? It was a horrible game. Simply horrible. Scripted events do not a good game make. But from a technical, omg, point of view, it made cards cry. So they use it *shrug*

Am I missing something here? The article states that the hardware is quite powerful and a good deal, yet to me the benchmarks look absolutely miserable. The X1ks are on the bottom of nearly every chart, and in some cases, even lower than their predecessors (X800)! What the hell! Reply

Actually, the conclusion states that the hardware appears quite powerful - especially the X1800 XT - but that the price is too high. I saw several places where the article comments on price, so if you got the impression that it's a "good deal" let me know where and I'll edit it. :) Reply

You list 4x AA for the High End cards at 1600x1200. What about other levels of AA, and various levels of AF?

What about other resolutions? and varying levels of AA and AF at different resolutions and how they compare image quality wise? Okay, so the X1600XT loses at 1280x960 with no aa or af. What about at 1028x764 with AA and AF on? And how does that compare image wise?

Where is the discussion of the results? You just throw out graphs at me, and don't do a real disucssion of them.

At this point, a fairly weak review from Anandtech, especially compared to the 7800GTX review when it appeared. Hot Hardware and Tech Report have a bit better coverage IMO.

Looking at other reviews around the web, my conclusion is the X1800 cards are viable competitors in performance to the 7800 cards, but the street prices will have to come down near the 7800 cards to be a good value.

The X1600 cards look dead in the water when the 6600GT is under $150 and available in AGP and PCIe, while the 6800GT is far beyond it in the ~$250 segment.

The format of the hardocp articles has grown on me, especially after reading there review + the anandtech + another.

There are all kinds of AA and AF options for a reason. They look different. How do the affect peformance though? What works best?

That obviously varies by game, card and resolution. But anandtech and others just don't do the comparisons and I think that makes it difficult to compare. Especially when image quality differences between nvidia and ATI come into play with there various settings. Reply

You really need to evaluate your situation at this website. You are listed as "author" of the "NVIDIA's GeForce 7800 GTX Hits The Ground Running" and "ATI's Late Response to G70 - Radeon X1800, X1600 and X1300" articles. Both of these articles are not up to Anandtech standards and have prompted numerous posts for readers to visit other websites.

I am a long-time reader of the site and am only posting this because I don't want to go anywhere else. I just don't believe that your articles have been up to snuff. The posts for proofreading, wrong labels, incomplete data, etc keep appearing and back up my opinion.

If Anand did not finish your mentoring, please let him know. I know that you put a lot of time and effort into this site, but the two biggest articles of the year for GPU's have left me shaking my head in dissapointment. Please work more with Anand, or do your own homework and read some of his old reviews. If you need another person, or co-author to help you ...please swallow your pride and ask for it.

What credentials do you have to make such an accusation? What indicators do you use to support such a statement? On the contrary, considering the time frame and the rush to provide us with information it is obvious for the coherent, that he has done a good job. Glad to see information provided that will futher support my next video card selection. Reply

That is exactly the point! He shouldn't be rushing. The Techreport and Xbit Labs and many others offer much more informative reviews.

Do you want my credentials? It shouldn't matter a report is a report is a report. You don't have to have a PhD or be a CEO to have an opinion. Any person with a University or College degree knows how to write a report that is complete and accurate.

The fact of the matter is Anand's graphics reviews have been not up to par. Period. Reply

...there is an old saying. "Wait to see the whites of their eyes before shooting". Pre-orders mean nothing and delivery dates can change. Never ever order from a vendor that has a pre-order queue, unless you really don't care when you get the item. Who knows where you are in this queue? Few, if any of such vendors ever give you this information - for the obvious reason that thery don't want to risk losing the order. The first shipment might be 5 pieces and you are 20th on the list. Order product from vendors like Newegg or ZipZoomFly that sell only from available stock, but also have immediate auto e-mail notification when a sold-out item is back in stock... first come, first serve then of course, but at least the customer is never ever 'left hung out to dry'.

I personally view vendors with pre-order queues as somewhat sleazy, but maybe my view is extreme. A pre-order queue is entirely to the benefit of the vendor and not the customer. Reply

I was expecting the new ATI cards to be a bit more competitive especially given that they'll be more expensive. Wow, what a shocker! The X1600 isn't even worth buying at less than or equal to 6600GT performance at 6800GT prices. What a bargain!!! Reply

It was mentioned in this article as well. However, HDR already kills performance, and HDR + AA is going to be unplayable on anything short of Crossfired X1800 XT cards. Then again, HDR at 1600x1200 really isn't dying for 4xAA support, and I think many people looking at HDR are running very high-end displays and GPUs. Reply